Luna's Arc

Chapter 24 of 29

The bus doors folded open with a hiss. Luna stepped down first onto cold concrete. Behind her, Luke and the Ghost Kids poured off in a tired stream, their breath fogging in the dark. The hangar swallowed them whole. Luna could see nothing but shapes. She heard water dripping somewhere far off. Twenty children stood shivering around her, and one question pressed on all of them. How were they going to survive the harvest with no food and no plan? Harper felt along the wall with both hands. "There has to be a switch," she said. Her voice bounced off the metal roof. Luke gripped Luna's sleeve. The kitten mewed in his arms. The oldest Ghost Kid, tall and thin, herded the smallest ones close and kept them still. Luna reached for her steel tool, ready to strike at anything that moved in the dark. Then Harper found it. A switch clicked. Light flooded the hangar. Luna's breath caught. Against the far wall stood a wall of supplies. Crates stacked to her shoulder. Bags of grain and dried food. Jugs of clean water, rows of them. Folded blankets and thick warm coats in neat piles. Rifles laid across a wooden chest. It was not a handful of scraps. It was months of survival, maybe a whole year, gathered and stacked by careful hands. Her father's hands. Harper made a sound Luna had never heard from her. Her knees hit the concrete. She wailed, loud and raw, both palms pressed to her face. The cry filled the hangar. The children froze and stared. Luna understood. Her father had known he would die at the clearing. Before he went, he had built this for them. This was his last message, and Harper was reading it. Luna knelt beside her mother. She was smaller than Harper, so she pulled her mother's head down to her own shoulder. "He kept his promise," Luna said. "He said he'd give us a chance. Look. He did." Harper shook against her. Luna held on and did not let go, the way Harper had once held her. For a long moment they stayed like that on the cold floor. Then Luna stood and turned to the others. "We eat," she said. "All of us. Now." The oldest Ghost Kid moved first, tearing open a crate. Luke handed out cans and bags. Children who had not eaten in a day sat in a circle and passed food between them. Luna wrapped a blanket around Luke's shoulders and one around her own. That night the children slept warm and full for the first time in the story of their lives. Luna sat awake by the supply pile. She had a refuge now, and food, and time. But her father had prepared this place before he died. Luna wondered what else he had left inside these crates, and whether one of them held the truth about who her parents really were.